BEFORE: The voice of Anthony Hopkins carries over from "Rebel Moon - Part One" and so does pretty much the entire cast. I might set a record tonight for most people carrying over from one film to another.
This is one more way that "Rebel Moon" is either ripping off "Star Wars", or paying homage to it, whichever way you want to look at it. Hopkins voices the robot named "Jimmy", and to hear a beautiful British male voice coming from a droid, naturally that's going to call to mind Anthony Daniels as the voice of C-3PO. But this Jimmy droid is kind of a cross between C-3P0 and those battle droids seen in "Star Wars: Episode 1", or maybe K-2SO from "Rogue One", I'm not sure which. But I think a lot of characters here aren't direct rip-offs of specific "Star Wars" characters, they're more like amalgams of several put together, if that makes sense.
THE PLOT: Kora and the surviving warriors prepare to defend Veldt, their new home, alongside its people against the Realm. The warriors face their pasts, revealing their motivations before the Realm's forces arrive to crush the growing rebellion.
AFTER: The semi-magnificent Seven warriors make it to the village they were hired to defend, but they do so believing that they won't have to fight, because Atticus Noble is dead, for sure, Kora definitely killed him and it would be EXTREMELY unlikely for him to somehow be alive in the second film, like if he got revived by future science or dark magic and came back stronger than before, which would, I don't know, prompt the need for a second film with even more fight scenes than the first one? Come on, that's crazy talk, once a character in a sci-fi or fantasy film dies, they're dead forever, right? I mean, except Boba Fett. And Emperor Palpatine. And Darth Maul. And Gandalf. And Spock. And Ellen Ripley. And half of the Marvel heroes.
AFTER: The semi-magnificent Seven warriors make it to the village they were hired to defend, but they do so believing that they won't have to fight, because Atticus Noble is dead, for sure, Kora definitely killed him and it would be EXTREMELY unlikely for him to somehow be alive in the second film, like if he got revived by future science or dark magic and came back stronger than before, which would, I don't know, prompt the need for a second film with even more fight scenes than the first one? Come on, that's crazy talk, once a character in a sci-fi or fantasy film dies, they're dead forever, right? I mean, except Boba Fett. And Emperor Palpatine. And Darth Maul. And Gandalf. And Spock. And Ellen Ripley. And half of the Marvel heroes.
You see where I'm going with this - we just can't do this without a good villain, and the good bad ones always find a way to come back, right? Sometimes just a week later or maybe even a day, because why think up a new one when you can just bring back the old one? Writers are funny that way. I've seen every Marvel hero get "killed" at least twice since I've been reading comics, and the villains ten times more often. It's almost meaningless to say that a comic book character died, because none of them have managed to stay dead. There used to be a saying that "everyone comes back...except Bucky" but then some writer brought him back as the Winter Soldier, so he was no longer the exception that proved the rule.
This sequel took a while to get going again, because the whole second half is just one giant fight scene, but if we get there too quickly, then there's no suspense at all. So the Imperium is on the way to Veldt, they want to use that grain deal as an excuse to blow the whole village up from space, but, you know, space is really really big so it's going to take them a few days to get there. The heroes, meanwhile, got there in a flash, why is their spaceship so much faster than the villains ship? The heroes went all over the galaxy assembling this team, and then had to fly back to Veldt, and wouldn't you know it, they somehow got there five days before the villains did. What are the odds, now the humble villagers have time to harvest their grain AND learn how to use guns and explosives to defend themselves. Wow, if their spaceship had been just a little bit slower, they really would have been in a pickle. (COME ON!)
I've technically never seen "Seven Samurai", but I've seen "The Magnificent Seven" - both versions, and so I know the drill here. The heroes are there to defend the village, but they also serve to inspire the farmers to defend themselves, which is better all around in the long run. However, I wonder if it really serves these noble peasants to be turned into killers, even in the name of self-defense. They're not warriors at heart, after all, and how are they going to feel about themselves after they've killed their enemies? Well, alive, for one thing, but what effect will the battle have on their souls, if they're not noble innocent peasants any more? What if they get a taste for killing, or worse, can't live with themselves after their actions. It's a valid question that only I seem to be asking. Like, they hired the seven warriors for exactly this reason, to defend the village against the evil power, to kill on the villagers' behalf. OK, so sure, train them to slice up scarecrows and blow up vehicles, and I guess we'll sort out the morality of it all later.
So I'm afraid the sequel is a bit more predictable than the first film, if that's even possible. If you've seen "The Magnificent Seven" and/or "Seven Samurai" then this is all going to feel a bit old-hat to you, as if you've seen it before and you know exactly where. They had to dive deeper into the back-story of each team member here, which helps fill that time before the attack. And we also get more of Kora's back-story, which just happens to also be the back-story of what happened to the King and Queen, why they're no longer among the living, and that's also how the Imperium (Empire/First Order) took over the galaxy. Kora felt extremely guilty about her role in the coup, so that's why she ended up on the most remote moon she could find, and started living among the simple farmers, and trying to forget. Forget what? Exactly.
Finally the bad guys get to the moon, and we can start the battle that we've been anticipating for the last movie and a half. There are more call-backs to the Star Wars franchise, I couldn't help but think of the AT-AT snow walkers when I saw those walking tanks slowly advancing toward the village. Sure, it's not a snowy world like Hoth (nor a desert planet like Tatooine) but a battle is a battle, no matter where you go. The Imperium attacks from space, but also sends down "dropships" to get those tanks close to the village. But not too close, they still need to build up some suspense here.
Nemesis fights valiantly with her two laser swords (that are kind of like, but not completely like lightsabers) and Tarak teams up with the woman who looks like Furiosa from the "Mad Max" franchise, only she's not, and Kora and Gunnar have a mission of their own, to disguise themselves as stormtroopers and get aboard the Star Destroyer. No, wait, that can't be right. But it kind of is, isn't it? And Jimmy finally gets something done, he somehow overrode his programming and was able to fight again, something about hearing the dead princess's name? Anyway it was great to finally see him pulling his weight. I'm going to count him as the Seventh hero here, because as we established yesterday, there always have to be seven, because eight or more is too many for audiences to keep track of.
Look, we all really know how this one is going to end, the only question really concerns how many of the team of plucky heroes will survive the battle. And it can't be all of them, that's just a bit too unrealistic. Then they throw out a teaser for the next film's mission, a reason to keep the team together and focused, and roll credits. Again, after the huge set-up that was Part One, it just feels like the whole of Part Two was just following the formula, painting by the numbers and ticking all the boxes. A "fait accompli" if you will, look, I'll hang out long enough to see where everything lands, and sure, put me down for another installment, but they've got to get more original than this if they want to really hold my interest. Maybe I'm just jaded and I've seen it all before, though, I can't really say.
Also starring Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Ed Skrein, Michiel Huisman, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Staz Nair, Fra Fee, Cleopatra Coleman, Stuart Martin, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Alfonso Herrera, Cary Elwes, Rhian Rees, Elise Duffy, Sky Yang, Charlotte Maggi, Stella Grace Fitzgerald, Dustin Ceithamer, Josefine Lindegaard, Melissa Hunt, Sisse Marie, Thomas Ohrstrom, Thor Knai, Savanna Gann, Danielle Burgio, Julian Grant, Patrick Luwis, Tomm Voss, Christine Kellogg-Darrin, Skylar Okerstrom-Lang, Caden Dragomer, Kayden Alexander Koshelev, Kingston Foster, Brett Robert Culbert, Max Pescherine, Matt Nolan, Hamish Sturgeon, Adam J. Smith, MIchael James Bell, Richard Cetrone, Paul Sinacore, Raphael Corkhill, Kendall Wells, Daisy Davis, Zoe Sansanowicz (all 46 carrying over from "Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire"), Kevin Stidham, Charlie Clapham (last seen in "Kick-Ass 2"), Darren Jacobs, Gildart Jackson, Soma Mitra.
RATING: 5 out of 10 booby-traps (you know, like the ones the Ewoks set)
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